{"id":530102,"date":"2025-11-28T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=530102"},"modified":"2025-12-15T14:43:01","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:43:01","slug":"american-paradoxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/policy\/world\/american-paradoxes\/","title":{"rendered":"What American paradoxes teach us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maximum freedom of expression and a ban on alcohol in public spaces. Pornography and prudishness... There's no shortage of paradoxes on the other side of the Atlantic, but not trying to hide them is less hypocritical than believing oneself to be devoid of them. A lesson for Europe.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Take a trip to eight American states, and you'll be impressed by the sheer size and variety of these areas. As disproportionate as the skyscrapers are in height, these surfaces contrast above all with the density of Swiss living space, one of the highest in the world. A feeling no doubt common to all Swiss people making their first trip to Uncle Sam's country. Nevertheless, I understood what the superficiality often attributed to its inhabitants by Europeans had to say about these expanses of land as far as the eye can see, promises of adventure, mistakes and success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The long, deserted roads we criss-crossed in Texas and Oklahoma were a shock, counterbalanced by the hyperactivity of the megacities. And that's just one of the many contrasts this land has to offer. Some of them even take the form of paradoxes: what can we say about the gap between maximum freedom of expression and authorized carrying of weapons, on the one hand, and the ban on alcohol and tobacco consumption in public spaces, on the other? The reign of pornography and prudery? Wokism, which was born in opposition to racism, yet takes on its main hallmarks? The omnipresent use of air-conditioning, albeit at an exaggeratedly low temperature in relation to the heat outside?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read also | Le Regard Libre<\/em> in the United States<\/a><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Even the present, in America, seems to be constantly at odds with the past. To the point of insulting it. Here, in the nation's capital, black Jewish supremacists from the Black Hebrew Israelites - whose members present themselves as the true heirs of Israel - howl their hatred of whites into a megaphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where African-American activist Martin Luther King delivered his universalist \u00abI have a dream\u00bb speech. There, in Memphis, Tennessee, cradle of the unifying music of blues and rock, what was once an artistic and economic Eldorado has become a city that empties year after year, and now boasts one of the highest crime rates in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n